


Reborn

by Kelinswriter, Roadie



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Sanvers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:11:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13616928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kelinswriter/pseuds/Kelinswriter, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: Maggie goes out for a ride to clear her head.Canon compliant through 3x13.Author note: This all started with a wild idea Kelinswriter had on her morning walk. It's followed by a Roadie mini-fic that resolves the story. Enjoy!





	Reborn

**Kelinswriter:**

It was 11 a.m. when Maggie finally woke up. It wasn’t a shock; she’d pulled doubles four nights in a row, then ended up out drinking with McConnell till three in the morning, and she’d needed the sleep. She needed sleep a lot lately, it seemed; she’d been tired, restless, moody as hell. But that wasn’t anything new, not since she and Alex had called it quits. She’d upped her yoga practice, spent more time at the gym, even taken a week off to go backpacking in Costa Rica, but it hadn’t done anything to take the edge off her sense that there was something indefinably wrong with her, and always had been. She’d known it since the moment her parents had shoved her out the door, and Emily throwing her out after she cheated had only confirmed it.

And Alex? Well, Alex ending them over kids was nothing but icing on the cake — the final confirmation that Maggie was and always would be damaged goods.

But at least she was damaged goods with a day off, and from what she could see through the grime on her apartment window, it was a beautiful one. It was time to get outside; out of the city, maybe. To hop on her bike and find some open sky.

She didn’t bother with a map; simply let her instincts guide her. By three in the afternoon she was deep into the desert, so far off the beaten path that she wasn’t sure she could find it again even with the help of her GPS. It should have scared her, being out in this uncharted territory with no food and minimal water, but instead all she felt was elated, like an explorer on the cusp of a new discovery — like Columbus maybe, or that asshole who spent years looking for the Fountain of Youth. It felt a little gross to put herself in the shoes of men who had left nothing but death and destruction in their wake, but it didn’t change the fact that this was more fun than checking her phone every ten minutes in the blind hope that Alex had called or texted. She should have given up on that idea when there had been no response to her passport text other than a plain yellow envelope in the mail. But then, she should have given up on a lot of things by now. 

But not today. Today she was going to find an answer, even if it was just a temporary one, to that gnawing ache in her stomach telling her that something was deeply wrong with her, with her life, with her inability to hold on to and sustain love. Today she would find a reason for the growing sense that she was nothing but a disease that infected everything it touched.

She caught a flash of light in the distance and turned her head, her eyes caught by a jagged outcrop of rock in the distance. It didn’t look natural; looked manmade almost, its long slabs interwoven in a strangely geometric pattern, as if underlying this jumble was some sort of symmetry, hard as it might be for the eye to see. She turned the bike sharply, feeling gravel skid under her tires, and headed toward it.

As Maggie drew closer, she realized two things: The formation was larger than it appeared, and it was definitely a structure. There was a gap in the center that could only be a doorway, and she pulled to a stop before it, her senses on full alert. She wondered if this was some sort of alien installation, though how the DEO could have missed it considering they had near blanket satellite surveillance of the entire planet was beyond her. But there were no big black SUVs on the horizon, no helicopters swooping in, and definitely no Alex Danvers dropping out of the sky to scold her about jurisdiction. Nothing but the heat of the sun, and the endless blue of the sky, and the desert wind battering against the structure as if trying to wipe it from the face of the earth. 

She took off her helmet, her hair lashing against her face as it was caught by the breeze, and unzipped her jacket. _Don’t do this,_ something inside her said, something that sounded a lot like Alex, but she ignored it, her curiosity — her need — to see what lay inside this strange building overriding all other considerations, including common sense. Besides, there was no one to go home to; no one to worry if she never made it back. So what did she have to lose, really, if she just disappeared?

Yet she dropped her hand to her hip, feeling the reassuring weight of her Glock at her side as she stepped across the threshhold. She waited for her eyes to adjust before pushing deeper inside what appeared to be a cave. A light flickered to life, blossoming outward until resolved into the figure of a woman in a dark cloak.

“You have found us,” the woman said, and Maggie felt a prickling along her spine — as if she was in the presence of a real person rather than a hologram.

“Found you?” Maggie looked around, her eyes discerning various formations in stone, each of them covered in glyphs — glyphs that looked very much like Kryptonian. And that meant —

_Oh shit. Reign._

She took a step back, her instincts screaming for her to get back on her bike and speed away, to retreat to a safe enough distance that she could call Alex — or Kara, or J’onn, or even Winn — someone who could do something, who wasn’t completely out of their depth. Then a sharp pain stabbed through her skull, the voice of the hologram beginning to amplify until it felt like it would swallow the whole world. 

“Your human life is over, my child,” the hologram said, both malice and triumph in its voice. “It is time for you to claim your birthright, to become what you have always been meant to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re —“ Another searing bolt of agony tore through Maggie’s skull, and she dropped, her knees slamming into the stone floor. She clawed for purchase, dirt and grit embedding in her palms as the pain rolled through her like a wave, battering against her until her skin peeled away, her bones turned to jelly. She felt like she was being burned alive, like her soul was being torn to shreds. 

_No,_ she thought. _No no no no Alex no —_

The shell cracked, split open, the shards flying away. She felt a rush of pleasure as they splintered, her soul thrilling to the cries of the weak, puny human whose guise she had taken for all these years. The sad, lonely child, unwanted by her parents, shattered by failure, forgotten even by those who had claimed to be her family. Yet she still screamed for them — screamed for one in particular — in the darkened prison of her mind. 

She rose, straightened, stepped forward; ready to claim her legacy, to claim what had been hers all along. She sensed movement and turned, seeing her sisters approaching from either side. Reign, whose strength had brought the Last Daughter of Krypton low, and Purity, whose gift was to see into the heart of humanity and make it bleed.

“We are here,” Reign said. 

“We are united,” Purity replied.

“We are ready,” the being that had once been Maggie Sawyer said, knowing then the reason for it all — the reason for the suffering and the darkness, the pain and the loss. Its sole purpose was to prepare her for what she was destined to be: Bringer of madness and destruction, harbinger of the Apocalypse. Worldkiller.

She was Pestilence.

And she had work to do.

 

 **Roadie** picks up the thread:

Imagine Maggie — getting such relief from it, on some level. Being allowed to have her anger and frustration surface, being able to just own that, let it drive out every sense of inadequacy she’s ever felt. 

Imagine Alex — biting the fuck out of the inside of her cheek because... she has to go talk to Oscar and Elena Rodas about where Maggie comes from and it emerges that she's not their biological daughter. They wanted one but couldn't conceive and then when they found her, abandoned, they thought she was a gift from God but when she came out, they realized they'd gotten it wrong: She came from the other place. And that, as much as anything, is why they kicked her out — and that just increases Alex's drive to save Maggie.

And yeah -- Reign sacrifices herself, but not so they can be together – that would be too easy. She wouldn't take her daughter's mother away for someone else's romance. She sacrifices herself because she's the lynchpin. If she dies, so do Pestilence and Purity, and the world — including her daughter — is safe.

The DEO have managed to rig a room with some kind of Kryptonite that suppresses the demons and somehow or another they're all there, Maggie and Sam in extreme pain because it fucking hurts to shut down a monster wrapped around your soul.

And Sam says, "You have to take care of her. Promise me you'll take care of her."

And they both promise, they swear it, and Maggie doesn't second-guess it for a minute.

And then Reign turns her own strength on herself and that's it. In a screech of pain and black smoke, Pestilence dissolves into the air.

(Yeah, I saddled them with the kid, but hey, that's a way to resolve The Mom Problem that everyone feels OK about, because ain't no way Maggie's going to turn down that responsibility.)


End file.
